Interesting AP 152's

I picked these up after losing an auction here for one. The owners contacted me privately and I couldn't resist. I guess I just won't eat for a couple of years.

They are from 1992 and are airspaced instead of oil spaced. There is NO color on ANYthing that I can detect visually and the images are sharp (!). Note the differences in the cells. I'm a happy guy right now.

Jeff

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Another view

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Jeff Blazey said:

I picked these up after losing an auction here for one. The owners contacted me privately and I couldn't resist. I guess I just won't eat for a couple of years.

These? Meaning you bought two 152's? Enjoy deciding which is your fav! Much envy here

I love em. I regret selling my AP152/12 StarFire from the same year.

> Note the differences in the cells.

Cant see them behind their dewshields : ) but would love to see pics. My f/12 was also air spaced, and was the white counter-cell version with the single round of PEM nuts. Some pics:
http://www.pbase.com/mclemens1969/ap152_f12

That AP 6" f/12 was the only scope where I contacted my buyer later and asked if he wanted to sell it back ! One day I'll peer through an AP again.

Roland:

If you see this and can pry yourself away from the raging 4" ED debate can you elaborate a bit on the design & performance aspects of these scopes? They seem to occupy a rather unique place in your product history.

I had one of them at a public star outing outside of Cincinnati last weekend. There were a couple of dozen scopes out and the APO went un-noticed for a while. I had the Denk II's (with power switch) in with my trusty 25-year-old 26 MM Celestron "silver-top" Plossls. Seeing was actually quite steady. First up Jupiter. Very nice at mid-power with belts & festoons easily visible. About a half dozen people stopped by and their reactions were all one of two types: First a looong pause at the eyepieces followed by a closer inspection of the instrument which was followed by a direct comment to me like "That's an exceptional view! What scope is it?" Or an immediate exclamation of "Wow", or something like that, followed by basically the same questions. The same was true for M-13, the double-double (in particular!), the double cluster, M15, M27 or whatever, I had the scope pointed to. I also noticed that a hand full of people kept returning for a look. One guy named Scott in particular seemed to be really enjoying the scope. He had a 12", F6 I believe, Dob there with an exceptional optical train made by a local optician that was giving up a very nice star test. We both remarked on how little difference there appeared on M15 at the same power per inch of aperture. The bigger Dob did indeed resolve more stars but the overall visual impacts were very similar. My own comparisons with other scopes showed the 152 F9 to be very high on the visual "punch" meter....but I am just a bit biased.

I thought you might appreciate a bit of feedback on a 15 year old product of yours that's still in very active use.

Jeff